Tactile advertising relies on the intimate relationship between consumer and product that is formed through touch. An effective marketing promotion that allows customers to become familiar with your items for sale involves holding the objects, whether in reality or virtually. Customers respond to items depending on how they feel. A positive tactile experience relates information that includes the value, durability and functionality of your goods.

Texture

How a product feels to the touch can be an important part of its marketability. For example, if you manufacture blankets, you can appeal to potential customers by advertising the softness of the material, relating it as silky smooth or woolly rough. Emphasize the thickness of the blanket as well so customers gain a tactile understanding of how warm the material will make them feel. Create an online video featuring actual customers picking up your products to help demonstrate its textural feel. You can also take close-up photographs of items so that the texture can be seen.

Shape

Shape is another way to market a product based on its tactile properties. For example, if an item you are selling has a unique shape it will be remembered by customers as being different. The publishing company Palgrave MacMillian reminds business owners of the Coca-Cola bottle, to which customers are intimately connected in part because of its familiar shape and the way it fits in their hands. If you have a product with an unusual and functional shape, use that shape and test it out in focus groups. If you get a positive response, feature the unique shape in a marketing campaign. Create fliers, brochures and emails showing your product to encourage buyers to get their hands on it.

Weight

Weight can be felt in the hands. People often associate the heaviness of an item with its durability and strength or its lightness with ease of use. In the case of furniture, for example, it is generally thought to be more valuable when it is heavy. When weight is used as a marketing factor, customers tend to have a more serious interest, according to Scent Marketing Digest. If you are marketing high-end tables, for example, you want buyers to know these items are weighty because it implies they will endure and the expense will be worth it. Your best marketing will come when shoppers are allowed to touch the products, but you can also create images that indicate weight, such as showing two strong men lifting the item.

Temperature

A physical aspect that is often overlooked when advertising an item is the product's temperature. Many times, this is not an important factor, but with certain things it can be a remarkable feature. If for example, you are selling mints, you might want to capitalize on their "coolness" in the mouth. You could do this by creating advertisements in which someone is bundled up in winter clothes, standing in the snow blowing kisses that emerge as visible breath. Likewise, if you are selling an item that is "hot" in nature, such as cocoa, you can show a cup of chocolate drink that has swirls of steam rising from it. Use your imagination when using temperature to advertise items that are not really high in temperature but that you want to market as "hot" by using images depicting the item as too warm to touch, for instance.

Malleability

Sometimes you can focus advertising on a product's malleability. Plastics, for example, often need to have inherent flexibility to be functional. Putties and silicone sealers are sold mainly because of their ability to be molded. Lots of toys that children enjoy can be manipulated, and that's their primary aspect. One example is clay, which can be stretched and shaped over and over again. When marketing is based on malleability, it is important to demonstrate this trait by using an image or video showing someone using the product so the buyer can virtually experience its uses.

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About the Author

Lisa Mooney has been a professional writer for more than 18 years. She has worked with various clients including many Fortune 500 companies such as Pinkerton Inc. She has written for many publications including Woman's World, Boy's Life and Dark Horizons. Mooney holds bachelor's degrees in both English and biology from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.